He was the guy who made me want to Be Alive. Being Alive is choosing to live…but Being puts the essence into the Living.
The essence of my Being once died. There were days when I would sit with all the lights out and try to conjure up enough emotion to make myself cry. It had to be forced. My feelings had become so constipated I had to extract them by thinking of my dog that died when I was 13. I’d do anything for the release of tears. They were always on the brink of overflow but the climax would never come. The tears glued inside my soul like I had a sneeze locked inside my nose.
When our friendship was on the verge of changing forever because change is inevitable, Kipp told me I look red. My skin, my freckles, my fingers, my feet—appear to Kipp to be the color red. He broke this news to me nonchalantly as if his colorblind perspective didn’t color me as The Devil.
Three years! Yes, three years spent together and as it turns out I may as well been dressed as a Smurf or Shrek because I didn’t look like a normal person. We’d committed ourselves to so many intense conversations, embarrassing and deep and vulgar that I never thought there was something about him I didn’t know. I never thought he knew something about me that I didn’t know. We remained friends despite how hideous I must have appeared to him. This wasn’t something to be taken with a grain of salt as Kipp wasn’t one to slum about with ugliness. I decided I must meet his standards in other categories.
Be First to Comment